103 Quotes by D.T. Suzuki

We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

We have never lost Paradise, but human consciousness tells us we have lost it and that we have to regain it. But in fact, Paradise has never been lost, Paradise is never to be therefore regained. We are in Eden, just as we are now.

God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature. Very funny religion!

在箭術中，射手與目標不再是兩個相對的事物，而是一個整體。射手不再意識到自己是一個想要擊中對面箭靶的人。

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.

But nothing awakens religious consciousness like suffering.

In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from a hitherto undreamed-of angle of observation.

Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.

In the study of Zen, the power of an all-illuminating insight must go hand in hand with a deep sense of humility and meekness of heart.